The technology relates to a lane recognition apparatus that recognizes a lane of a road on which a vehicle travels and provides a driver with a result of the recognition of the lane.
In recent years, driving assistant systems for vehicles such as automobiles have been developed and put into practical use. Such a driving assistant system may recognize travelling environment around a vehicle by means of an on-board device such as a camera and radar, to assist a driver with driving operations, and to lessen an operation burden on a driver. Some driving assistant systems may have a function of recognizing a lane of a road on which an own vehicle travels, and performing a steering control and giving an alarm for purpose of lane keeping travelling and lane deviation prevention. The driving assistance system may also notify the driver of a state of lane recognition, a state of assistance control such as whether the assistance control is in operation or on standby, or any other information through screen displaying or a voice.
The lane recognition is often directed to lane lines on the road. For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication (JP-A) No. 2007-125968 discloses a technique including a lane line recognizer that recognizes lane lines on a road surface on which a vehicle travels. In the technique disclosed in JP-A No. 2007-125968, lane lines on a screen are displayed in a daubing fashion when the lane line recognizer recognizes the lane lines on the road surface, and the lane lines on the screen are displayed in outline when the lane line recognizer does not recognize the lane lines on the road surface.